On the 21st October 2014, a few people on this forum would have heard about the issue I had with Steam.
Basically I tried to make a payment via Steam for a game, however during an unusually lengthy authorization process, a message prompt on the screen that my Transaction was cancelled due to a "Unknown Reason", I checked my email for any payment confirmation yet I did not receive any, so under the impression that my transaction was indeed cancelled I tried again, after yet another lengthy Authorization period the message popped up that Transaction was successful, I checked my email to find that I had received 2 payment receipts sitting in my inbox both charging me for the same amount with exactly the same time-stamp.
I tried to contact Steam Support the very moment I saw the emails, yet I could not get through to them because their web page was down. The next day I checked my bank statements to check if this was a fluke and it seems Steam took 2 payments of £25 had been taken out of my account, I managed to get in contact with them and explained in detail had what happened and politely asked if they could returned half the money they charged me.
A week later Steam replied to my message with a generic Copy 'n' Paste response about how they do not do refunds, and that was pretty much all I got out of them.
Unhappy about this I later went to my local bank and explained the situation in detail, they put me through to their Fraudulent claims department and I explained the situation to them as well and they agreed to take this further, Pretty soon I got the £25 back that I asked for.
Right now (20/11/14) I am greeted by this message:
Because I got my money back from them, they have decided to enforce a 9 week embargo of Steam features and a permanent ban of future use of my Bank card If I do not tell the bank to cancel my fraudulent claim against them.
Im doing what I believe was the right thing, they had no right to take double what I authorized or hold on to that money and if they agreed to refund me the money in the first place, there would have been no need for me to go through these channels, I feel like I am now being blackmailed.
This dispute may seem quite petty to some, especially over the amount in question. But to those on a very low wage in a pretty despairing work of work, this amount can be a entire days worth of work, its enough to last a whole weeks worth of grocery and its worth a lot to me.
Is there anything I can do?
